The window

In the rain, walled in by clay shades

And the scattered brick that repeats in rooves

Breaking spumes of green, this framed scene

Is the stuff of epics, snow blind boredom

Of escapes and flights. Yoked madness

And demons beaten like sled dogs till they drag

Some words, from the whisper of car wheels

In spray, from the soft pat of footsteps

Kissed by moist concrete. With this

Turbulent pot of spider stocked molten soup

Thick with all that's caught between Colombia

Canaria, East India, flies swarm, drawn

To the sweet rot, scent of piled corpse and sacrifice

The old headstones stacked like index cards

Against the moss stippled yard wall

Of St. Someone's church by the flats,

That sits locked like it or god forgot;

To the sediment of the anthropocene

The rich alluvial deposits of longitude

Of law, the first thawings of power's grasp

And what jungles grew, what jungles of souls

Where cut, chainsawn to planks

By the strong arms of freedom, shipping rope

And sails stretched like spider silk past sunset

And the clay shaded walls left

As testament, as embers and magnets

This horizon of stacked brick and rain

Is the stuff of epics. It's plain.